Japan was at the bottom (of industrial economies) in the post war world and leveraged those low wages to re-industrialize and get to the top. China did the same thing in the 80's and 90's, and is now seeing upwards wage pressure as they approach a first-world level of economic activity.

Next up will be the Indias and Vietnams of the world. Hopefully eventually subsaharan africa will get there.

This is a good thing, overall. Yes, working conditions at "the bottom" are often huge problems (though again: remember the comparison is to abject poverty). And yes, rapid change causes people to lose jobs elsewhere faster than they can be replaced, and that sucks for those people.

But to argue that chasing cheap wages is inherently bad is isomorphic to arguing that poor people should always be poor, and that's much less palatable to me.